INTRODUCTION: Age distribution in Brazil has changed a lot in the last 50 years, with significant increase in elderly population. Despite this scenario, few medical schools offer discipline of Geriatrics in their curricula.OBJECTIVE: To evaluate and to compare the relationship between the percentage of elderly population by Brazilian geographic region and specific teaching of Geriatrics in undergraduate medical courses.METHODS: It was analyzed curricula of 77 Medicine courses of public higher education institutions. The relationship between specific teaching of Geriatrics and the percentage of elderly Brazilian region was found by dividing the percentage of courses with such discipline by the total elderly population by region in Brazil. The collected data were stored and analyzed by the software Microsoft Excel® 2010.RESULTS: The South region had the best result of this relationship, with six (46.2%) of 13 courses analyzed having that specific teaching; the North was the second one with two (20%) courses of the 10 examined; then, were the Northeast and Southeast regions with seven (29.2%) of the 24 courses evaluated in each region, and finally, the Midwest region with one (16.7%) of six evaluated.CONCLUSION: It was concluded that it is necessary an overhaul of current curricula, adapting it to the reality of the population of each region in order to graduate more prepared physicians to treat the aging population demands.

Care Plan is a strategy of organizing the elderly care in an integrated and comprehensive network.OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the results of the suggestions from the rehabilitative action with professional assistance in Care Plans developed by a reference center of Seniors in Belo Horizonte city.METHODS: Analysis of Care Plan and semi-structured interview by telephone survey.RESULTS: From 97 rehabilitative action suggestions with professional assistance recorded in the 51 Care Plans, only 25 (25.8%) of these suggestions were implemented, as reported by users and/or their families, especially in public health (92%) and through primary care (68%), with a delayed time of 16.60 ± 27.37 weeks. In the opinion of 69.4% of users and/or their families, the main barrier to receive the suggested assistance was that they did not know about these suggestions in rehabilitative Care Plan.CONCLUSION: Being aware of these suggestions and looking for these services seem to be important factors to make the suggestions of the rehabilitative actions be effectively provided, so the relevance of co-responsibility and involvement of all actors to make the network, especially users and their families in planning and implementation of rehabilitative actions. Further studies are needed to the deep understanding of the real constraints to the implementation of longitudinal elderly care.

Self-medication is a procedure based on the initiative of a sick person, or it's responsible, in obtain or produce and use a product that may provide those benefits on the treatment of illnesses or a relief of the symptoms.OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the self-medication among elderly people.METHODS: It is a transverse, descriptive, observational study, involving 104 elderlies of both genders that go to a Senior Community Center, in Pouso Alegre, Minas Gerais. The self-medication questionnaire developed by Servidoni et al. (2006) was used and it contains 16 multiple choice questions and 1 descriptive question to eventual comments. The datas were submitted to descriptive statistical analysis, qui-square test and Fisher's test.RESULTS: In the studied population, 14% were men and 86% are women, the average of age was 69.86 (SD 6.20) to men, and 68.66 (SD 7.99) to women. At least 77.3% of the sample who answered the questios had already used self-medication, 57.3% women and 20% of men, among men 100% bought the medication for themselves, while 38% of women bought the medications for themselves and 62% bough them for some family members. About 40% of women and 33% of men were adviced by clerks while buying medication, and 33% of women and 47% of men had received advices without asking for. Analgesics/antipyretics (36%), flu medicines (29%), anti-inflammatory (26%), among women, and for erectile dysfunction (14%) and flu medication (14%) among men, were the most used drugs. Headache and flu symptoms were the most common complaints.CONCLUSION: It was concluded that there was a high index of self-medication in the studied population.

The increase of elderly population in Brazil and all around the world shows the need of reviewing the health cares in order to get a better quality of life.OBJECTIVE: To evaluate lifestyle and health care of elderly participants of UNATI, Franca, SP.METHODS: Sixty elderlies answered a questions about socio-economic issues, health care, food consumption habits and lifestyle, after, they were submitted to anthropometric and laboratory tests.RESULTS: There was a prevalence of women (85%), aged between 60-69 years old (60%), up to high school (60%), retired (65%), income up to 5 minimum wage (73.4%). Most seniors assessed medical care (65%) were in use of long-term medicines (78.3%), they reported to control blood pressure (80%) and to not smoke (100%). About 71.7% people believed to have a healthy diet, 97% took meals at home, 85% chose and prepared their own food, 65% had 5-6 meals/day, 63% drank 1L of water/day, 90% had bowel function and 43.3% practices a regular physical activity. Only 13.3% have done hormone replacement therapy, 18.3% take dietary supplements and 21.7% drink alcoholic drinks. The participants presented a BMI of 27.49 ± 4.5kg/m2, prevalence of overweight and eutrophy, which values decreased with age. Leg circumference (LC) (36.27 ± 3.84 cm), Arm circumference (AC) (31.39 ± 4.08 cm) and triceps skinfolds (TS) (20.58±7.54mm) values were suit in most cases (96.7, 85 and 83.3%, respectively). Serum total cholesterol values were 198.53 ± 35.2mg/dL, 55% were considered optimum. About 63.3% and 68.3% of the elderlies, respectively, presented a high density lipoproteins (HDL) (53.58± 10.9mg/dL) and triglycerides (TG) (143.97 ± 92.37mg/dL) according to the recommendation and 51.7% of the elderlies had normal glycemia, 38.3% had risk and 10% showed high blood glucose, indicating diabetes.CONCLUSION: Many elderlies had body mass index (BMI) above normal, indicating overweight or obesity, but the participants can be considered healthy because of AC, LC and TS values, diet habits, health care and lifestyle.

OBJECTIVE: The control of high blood pressure, its appropriate treatment and the implementation of specific actions regarding the health care, are important items for the quality of life improvement concerning elderly people. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the quality of life of elderly people registered in USF Bongi Boa Ideia, microregion 5.1, Sanitary District V in Recife - Pernambuco, collecting data in order to build multidisciplinary solutions to control and prevent hypertension.MATERIAL AND METHODS: It was done a quantitative, cross-sectional and descriptive study to evaluate the quality of life, socioeconomic status and cultural profile of these individuals, it was used both questionnaires: the MINICHAL and a semi-structured. A hundred elderly patients with diagnosis of hypertension participated in this study. The following variables were analyzed: gender, age, marital status, education level, financial income, physical activities, use of alcohol and leisure.RESULTS: In a sample of 56 men and 44 women with an average age of 72-98, it was possible to observe that married elderly, with higher educational level, financial income greater than - or equal - to the minimum wage, practitioners of physical activities and with some kind of leisure activity, presented higher quality of life indexes when compared with the opposite universe.CONCLUSION: Relating the socioeconomic status, cultural factors and the quality of life of elderly people, it was concluded that is necessary to create new health policies in order to interfere in the daily life of the elderlies, aiming an improvement of the quality of life for elderly people with hypertension through non-medicated measures.

OBJECTIVE: Evaluation of the level of knowledge about food and health of older adults with diabetes enrolled at the Senior Assistance Center of the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil).METHODS: A cross-sectional study with a pretest-posttest methodology was carried out involving older adults with type 2 diabetes. A food and nutrition education project was developed in three courses, with workshops on the physiopathology of diabetes, treatment with nutrition and medication as well as the importance of physical activity. Evaluations involved the determination of scores (0 to 10 points). The Student's t-test and chi-square test were used for the comparison of groups and food/nutrition workshops, with the level of significance set to 5% (p < 0.05).RESULT: No significant learning was found in the posttest analysis of each course. However, in the comparison of means obtained by each patient in each course, significant learning was found in the first course (majority upper level) and significant improvement was found in the level of knowledge based on scores in the three courses, although without achieving statistical significance (p = 0.096). In the comparison of learning in the workshops on nutritional treatment in the three courses, significant learning was found in 50% of the topics addressed.CONCLUSION: The level of nutritional learning increased following the intervention. Nutrition education can be used in the treatment of older adults with diabetes as a way to ensure the adherence to overall treatment, which includes nutrition as its main focus.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to analyze the memory performance in relation to physical activity levels of older people active and less active.METHODS: In this study 150 subjects were divided in seniors physically active and less active, regular residents of Juiz de Fora, they were submitted to the tests Mini Exam of Mental State and the International questionnaire of Physical Activity (IPAQ). We correlated all the data.RESULTS: The analysis of these results showed a significant difference among the groups. The seniors' group physically active presented better results mainly in the exam of Mini Exam of mental State related to memory in relation to the group of seniors less active, they also presented better results in all of the comparisons done by the Test T (p < 0.05). The result showed that the activity influences directly in the seniors' memory.CONCLUSION: The senior's groups physically active presented better results in cognitive assessment.

OBJECTIVE: Evaluation of the effects of the hearing aids over quality of life and hearing in older adults with hearing impairment.METHODS: The study included 50 older adults, 29 women and 12 men, aged over 60 years old. They were divided into groups: G1 - Intervention Group, G2 - Control Group. The tests HHIE-s, MMSE and WHOQOL Breef were applied, before the use of hearing aid and 12 weeks after.RESULTS: We observed a significant improvement in analysis of the scores of the HHIE-s after the use of hearing aids - G1. The analysis of MMSE showed statistically significant differences, comparing the two groups. In the test WHOQOL Breef quality of life showed a difference only in the physical dominance, compared with seniors who do not use hearing amplification.CONCLUSION: Through self-evaluation questionnaires, it was possible to confirm the benefits of the hearing aids for the users, who became less conscious of their hearing incapacity.

The present study aims to point out the reasons for non-adherence to the elderly vaccination campaign against influenza. This is an overview of the literature, update kind; taking as a basis dissertations and theses, completion of course work and scientific articles on the subject, available in the databases of health sciences online: Lilacs and SciELO. Several reasons were found for non-adherence to vaccination, especially the fear of adverse reactions, it is necessary a great involvement from health professionals` to make them see the importance of vaccination against Influenza for an elderly population.

INTRODUCTION: Aging people represent a growing population in Brazil and worldwide. Physiological changes due to age, comorbidities, and polypharmacy make them highly susceptible to adverse drug events. Medication reconciliation may be a useful strategy to reduce these events, when the patient is transferred between different levels of health care.OBJECTIVE: To conduct a review of the literature on medication reconciliation in elderly people in the transition of health care.METHODOLOGY: It was done an overview of the literature available in PubMed.INCLUSION CRITERIA WERE: population involving exclusively elderly or mostly elderly; language in English, Spanish or Portuguese; articles published in the last five years. Two reviewers examined the titles and abstracts, and proceeded in a completed reading of each article and the inclusion of the most relevant ones.RESULTS: Twelve studies were included. Half described the rate and types of discrepancies in the transition points; highlighting the drug omission as the main discrepancy. Three assessed the contribution of pharmacists in the process, indicating the higher quality obtained with their involvement. Five analyzed the consistency of the information provided in the continuity of care and the impact of medication reconciliation on medication errors, demonstrating the importance of collecting an initial precise medication history to reduce adverse events, polypharmacy and medication errors.CONCLUSION: Medication reconciliation may be an important tool for the safety of elderly patients in the transition of health care. The role of the pharmacist and the integrity of the medication history were related to the improvement of the process and patient care.